The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 3 Review

This is a non-spoiler review for all eight episodes of The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 3. The third season premieres Sunday, July 26 at 9pm ET/PT on AMC and AMC+.

The Walking Dead: Dead City has finally stumbled upon a mostly-winning formula for its third season, delivering compelling new elements and a bold new direction that should have been part of the show's DNA from the start. Outside of a messy premiere episode "reboot," of sorts, the Season 3 story — and where we find Maggie and Negan as frenemies-to-friends — is what this series should have been all along.

Season 3 is as close to a do-over as the show can muster given the sloppy tapestry of the last few years with the Croat, the Dama, bitter Hershel, and New Babylon — and with Maggie and Negan pretending like they already hadn't come to a friendly coexistence by the end of the mothership Walking Dead's final season. Hopefully, you'll forgive the initial hastiness to undo the missteps of the first two seasons, but once that dust settles (literally, kind of), the new path our characters find themselves on is quite good. And in the back half of Season 3, you're going to see a phenomenal episode unlike anything the Walking Dead universe has ever done before.

Season 3 is far less cluttered than the first two, and keep in mind that the end of Season 2 was already working to reset the missteps of Season 1, awkwardly shuttering that weird Last of Us-style apocalypse father/daughter set up with Negan and Ginny — a bonehead idea meant to ride the coattails of a trend at the expense of Negan's own previous personal growth and actual new family. Pairing Maggie and Negan up for a new series was a grand idea, but Dead City started off the blocks by pretending that Walking Dead: Season 11 never happened, and now we've finally gotten to the point where it's narratively acknowledging that was a dickhead move.

In a zompocalypse story, there's only one true endgame. Posed as a question, it's: "How do we rebuild?" Dead City now goes a step beyond that and explores whether or not a true utopia is really possible. Should a community always have to live in fear, in hiding? Is a non-lethal approach to community relations actually achievable? Scarcity causes panic and conflict, so can we actually get to a place of comfort and camaraderie — something better than even Alexandria, Hilltop, et al.?

Manhattan continues serving as the backdrop here as Maggie and newcomer siblings nicely played by Aimee Garcia and Raúl Castillo try to create a community that not only thrives, but also clearly advertises itself to the world as a beacon of hope. This attempt to earnestly move forward means that past scars must get buried, and it allows Lauren Cohan to tackle her best Maggie material in years, confronting her grief over Glenn and finally settling into a dynamic with Negan that makes sense given all they've endured and experienced together.

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Admittedly, I'm a "Neggie" shipper; I'm a sucker for this particular slow-burn enemies-to-? team-up. I would be over the moon if the "?" meant lovers or even smoochers, but I get why the show wouldn't want to go there. I also completely understand why most sane people, tried and true romance tropes aside, still can't forgive Negan and would never ever want this. That being said, and without spoiling some great things, Season 3 breaks down several walls and offers up intriguing, emotional avenues and scenarios you won't expect. I was simultaneously delighted and deflated, so make as much sense of that as you can. At the very least, even if the thought of "Neggie" makes you wretch, you have to admit these two characters are connected at the deepest level. That's the itch Season 3 is finally scratching, and not to sensationalize or make headlines either. It's thoughtful and wonderful and the one aforementioned back half episode is the best thing the Dead universe has done in years.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Negan, who has some pretty bad "shittin' pants" Negan-isms this season (oof), is a square peg in a sea of round holes, believing in Maggie's new dream and wanting the best for her, but also too trapped in his own pessimism to be anything other than adjacent to it all. Though now that Dead City has matured past these two being at each other's throats, and even past their uneasy frenemy phase, Negan figures himself as Maggie's protector even if she never asked for it and even if it undermines her new societal values. Negan's not off to the side sulking, no; he does however find himself slinking back into wastoid slacker Negan mode, befriending Dillard (Jimmi Simpson) — a former cop who's been living in a bar in some pretty harsh isolation and who's had to twist his psyche into some unique shapes in order to survive emotionally. It's a fun but complicated bromance.

Season 3 doesn't have a long-form villain; there's a third act antagonist, but for the most part, the struggle involves trying to be a bright virtuous light in a swamp of sin and selfishness. The season isn't a home run, considering the embarrassing heavy lifting done in the premiere to wipe the slate, and the messaging at the very end feels a little reductive and regressive. Nevertheless, the bulk of it is rich and meaningful; the new characters are well presented and well tended, some clunky old characters become non-issues, and Maggie and Negan — at long last — have the relationship they should have had since Dead City began.